The New Marketing-tech Fuelling CRM, Marketing Automation & Predictive Analytics tools.
Marketers need to make decisions in a data-rich environment, where vast amounts of customer data are flowing not only from the company’s internal systems such as CRM, marketing automation and web analytics, but also from external sources such as social, mobile, and other sources that can be found all over the web.
Companies are investing heavily in marketing technology such as CRM, Marketing Automation & Predictive Analytics tools. The total addressable B2B marketing opportunity is growing significantly larger. Some research studies indicates that B2B Marketing industry is valued at 50 Billion (LinkedIn), CRM market is valued at 36 Billion (Gartner) & Sales Acceleration tech is valued at 13 Billion (Insidesales.com). The interesting fact is Data makes them all work. Data is the gasoline for CRM & Marketing tech engines. Accurate data gives the best decision support triggers from marketing technology systems.
The B2B marketing data industry has entered into a period of rapid change after decades of stagnation. Historically, marketers purchased quickly deteriorating lists from data vendors or their resellers. Data quality was shaky and decayed faster. To standardize and maintain marketing data, most firms were dependent upon ongoing list purchases to feed their marketing systems and programs.
Key Players
Traditional marketing list vendors have established data trading methods for obtaining marketing data. Firms such as NetProspex, Data.com, and Zoominfo collect contacts data from list re-seller and crowd sourcing networks. They offer a robust data syndicates eco-system to supply marketing lists for conventional push broadcasting marketing campaigns such as email campaigns and tele marketing.
Data Cloud vendors such as DiscoverOrg, RainKing & Corporate360 leverage data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence to gather, aggregate and analyze marketing data from online sources including previously unavailable content such as installed technologies and social data. These modern data mining methods are complemented with human intelligence through research and published in a modern marketing data cloud thus supports improved prospecting, targeting, and messaging.
Data Cloud
Data-as-a-Service Cloud is relatively a new marketing technology that is evolving in global markets. As an alternate to buying rapidly deteriorating prospect lists, marketers and sales executives can subscribe to Data Cloud software for prospects data, lead enrichment, and ongoing data accuracy maintenance. The system provides APIs for delivering marketing data directly to CRMs and Marketing Automation platforms. The benefits are numerous including:
- Automated CRM & Marketing data accuracy updates
- Prospecting data tool for sales teams
- Campaign data system for marketers
- Secondary sales insight data tool for predictive analytics teams
Looking Forward
Marketing Data Cloud is increasingly becoming an integral part of the marketing technology eco system. Data Cloud systems will be fully integrated into CRM and Marketing Automation platforms. This will provide ongoing data standardization, real-time updates, and enrichment of marketing data within cloud platforms real-time. They will also expand their content and feature sets by incorporating multiple marketing data characters including:
- Email verification
- Buyers persona from social data
- Contacts data privacy compliance validation
- Competitive intelligence
- Account based marketing
Data Market Place
Another positive trend is the formation of data exchange market place. This allows a central data vendor to aggregate niche data vendors into a single platform to provide a robust ecosystem of industry specific marketing data intelligence to assist with targeting key industries. Dun & Bradstreet, Oracle, and Salesforce.com have already launched such data exchanges.
Changing Business Model
Traditional flat fee based static list sourcing model will be soon tested for its value for investments. Often times, prospects data decays fast thus results in purchasing a wasting asset. With the advance of data science technologies and Big Data innovations, customers will have Data Cloud subscription options that augment customer and prospect intelligence data real-time and protects marketing dollar investments.
Marketing data hygiene managed within the cloud and connected to enterprise marketing platforms, will drive sales and marketing productivity gains for the next decade. That is the promise of the Data Cloud. With the right data tools & processes, many companies are transforming their approach to demand creation and letting data do the work for them.
Marketing campaigns are designed based on decision support triggers from several data sets from CRM, Marketing Automation, Predictive Analytics & external data sources. The success of any marketing campaign is largely dependent on accuracy and relevancy of prospects data. Modern marketing data cloud platforms allows accurate maintenance of marketing data complemented with more insights for accurate lead scoring for sales team benefits including:
- Rapid pipeline creation
- Reduced sales cycle
- Improved collaboration between sales & marketing teams
